A lesson from Pain

With all this talk of battles and pain, I do want to premise this one by saying I’m not actually doing half bad. I’m just frustrated because all my plans are being stomped on and set back a while. It’s aggravating. But I use those moments of aggravation to understand deeper things. I want to be able to give you answers to life’s problems. Deep down, that’s truly the reason I’m doing all of this. It’s what drives me to keep writing. I want to give insight to the world. Not so that I can become a famous man, but so that you can live a better life. That is worth getting out of bed for. 

Anyway, recently I had another day of bitter frustration. Another plan had fallen through and another thing set me back. I got hit with a double, actually. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it wasn’t a great day either. I am doing my best to be positive, but the setbacks keep coming. We are now going on three months of trudging through mud and I’m tired. Growing, but tired. But I had one moment where it all got the best of me. It was an intense enough experience that I have decided to reflect on it. I think I came up with something worth sharing. 

Pain makes us short-sighted. Pain is the harsh instructor that says “I am all that has ever been, and will ever be. Come and prove me wrong!” Pain is like a final exam: it claims authority. It is the “real life” that school has been preparing you for. It stomps its foot down and beckons you to defeat him. And defeat him we must! When he claims that he is all there is, we must be ready with our proof that he’s wrong. We must show him how arrogant he is to believe he is the only thing that is and that matters. We must prove that he isn’t able to control us like he thinks he is. 

Ok, poetics aside, my point is this: pain is the pushback. You can hold onto something forever when it’s pleasant, but when pain comes knocking, we find out what we really want to keep. We find out if we really want it, or if it was just a passing fancy. Sometimes, we are given the opportunity to want it deeper. And sometimes, it beckons us deeper because we realize nothing else will do. 

Pain has been a friend. A harsh one, but a friend nonetheless. When I’m lost and confused, the things that resist the pain are what wind up sticking with me. Heck, it’s why I started writing! It clears my head and helps me keep my cool. Some days I find if I don’t write, I start to spiral. When I put my pen to the page, it’s like I’m scribbling away the suffering. The same thing with movies: no matter how bad my day is, it is extremely rare that a trip to AMC doesn’t make things better. That’s why the hobby has stuck: it consistently brings an end to my suffering. At least, for a time. 

Pain is like a hammer. Sure, nobody wants to be bonked on the head, but I can’t imagine anyone that wouldn’t want their house to be sturdy. You know where that starts? With some hefty nails getting punched into place by a big ol’ hammer. I’m willing to bet that everyone is looking for something true and permanent. Pain is willing to help us get there. He can help us find what is true by blowing away everything he can. 

Here’s what I am finding as I learn from pain: there are some things he can’t take. Sometimes he tries to take something from me and I bite back. Although sometimes these obsessions are the reason he’s there in the first place, other times I can’t help but ask: where else would I go? What else would I do if I gave up on this project? How else would I live if I wasn’t trying to pay off this debt? I can’t think of any other way to live my life but to keep trying at this, even if it costs me everything. It seems to me like this will be worth it. 

So I stick with some things. Then pain comes back for round 2. Except now he doesn’t come after the thing, he comes after my why. He doesn’t try to demolish my grip, but to demolish bad parts of the grip. Shallow motives are tested, weak reasons are challenged, and I’m forced to either find a deeper, stronger one or give up. But we’ve established that I don’t want to give up, so I dig deeper, breaking ground as I reinforce the decision to make this work. I’m not giving up, and I’m going to find the force of will to make sure of it! I’m going to make sure no force of pain can grab hold of me and take me captive! I’m going to conquer and there’s nothing you can do to stop me! Pain also has a way of trying to make you lose hope. Sometimes it turns out you never had any hope in the first place. Things were just going well, so you didn’t need anything. Turns out you were off-track to begin with and you just didn’t notice. Sometimes there is a better path that beckons us, but we don’t see the need to go looking for it. Pain has a way of refining us to have deeper joy. We need to experience lower lows to have higher highs.

But before I wrap this up, I want to double back to something I mentioned earlier: pain has a way of making us near-sighted. It turns everything into an immediate problem. I have been working through this myself this very night. I am in a class on finances while wave after wave of extra expenses batter my spirit. Every night we are reminded that this course may be nine weeks, but it’s a blueprint that we need to keep for life. Pain brings us back to the immediate. It brings us back to now. Sometimes we need to be brought back to the present, but we need to remind ourselves to regulate this feeling. We need to continue to work on ways to bring ourselves back to the big picture. My favorite way is to count my wins. When I panic about not paying off my student loans fast enough, I remind myself that I have been paying above the minimum for years now, and am continuing to do so regardless of what dental disaster or car chaos has tried to knock me over. Those extra payments still get made and I am still getting it done faster than expected of me. After I have calmed down, I address the immediate needs that I was panicked about, but I’m able to do so effectively because my heart isn’t racing with madness.

Pain, like everything else, is a great teacher. He may be a harsh drill instructor, but as you begin to learn from his teachings, he will guide you to great depths of understanding beyond what you could have ever imagined. I would encourage you to take a deep breath next time you have something bad happen to you, and begin to develop a process that works best for you to be able to learn from your experiences. It’s an important thing to do and I guarantee that it will bring you to great and new places in your life.

Until next time

May Peace be your guide.